Why the "Out of Control" Prius Driver Is Full of It

Just saw the driver on NBC News - one of his comments "I didn't want to put it into neutral - I thought it might flip". So he drives 30 miles at up to 94MPH????

OK, there very well may be a problem with his Prius - but there sure was a problem in HIS driving "skill". Stupidity... And why did he need the CHP to tell him to put on the brake + emergency???

 

he was driving for 20 minutes in run-away car... he needs a medal.
After 20 minutes he managed to slow down when cops told him to press hard on the brakes and emergency brake.

If the story is actually true, he needs a medal of some sorts for managing to drive at WOT for 20 minutes on the highway.

 

based on my experience i think it is impossible for a scenario to play out in reality. I tried this full throttle acceleration at 60 mph and full braking and brakes override the gas pedal, this was done both on the NHW11 and NHW20. Its possible yes, that this could happen probably to NBC ABC and the owners of general motors. But this is what i think happened:
1. E-brake to a few clicks
2. Drove to 90+ mph
3. Brakes smell bad after 20 minutes, call cops
4. The rest of the BS
5. hot off the press. the prius has problems

i have a strong feeling that this may be toyotas ticket to redeem itself.

 

well apperantly he didnt want to put it into neutral or turn off the car... or obviously brake really hard and use emergency brake.

Without those 3, how exactly would you stop the car?
1. His car is accelerating out of control.
2. He does not want to put it into neutral, it would "flip out"
3. He does not want to turn it off, he was afraid of other cars that were passing him.
4. After 20 minutes officer drives next to him and tells him to brake hard and use emergency brakes. He slows down after that.

 

it can not ever be Toyota ticket, because they will say car was fine, while he will say it was not... we will conclude that "maybe something happened, maybe not".

Only thing that could happen here is cops making him talk.

 

What about the 911 call? Isn't that public domain? Anyone have a link to the call made by this guy?

 

I own a 2007 gen II. Have never experienced any problems. The media has not said if there was a scan gage present, and if itwas, were ther any modifications to the base program, in order to get increased gas milage. I remember is a post somewhere, just after joining, cautions were mentioned about changing some points of the base program. I have close to 60,000, wonderful trouble free miles, cept for the dam HID passenger headlight ecu, but that is minor, just shut my lights of, when convenient, and reboot them. so I will wait for a report, on what really happened to the guy, maybe he didn't have his floor matts down with the provided clips to hold them in place, and the floor matt, was behind the brake pedal... Time will tell, but having driven Toyotas since 1973 with my fire red Carina, which by the way still runs and has 3.2 millinon miles on it, and I still own it...

 

Are you calling him out for BS about his car malfunctioning because he didn't know what to do in the event of a malfunction?

 

I could be wrong, but my gut is telling me that when the dealer told him the Prius is not impacted by the second recall (first is floor mats), that he got pissed and staged it.

NTSB is investigating. If it did as he claimed, our cars are going to be recalled. If not, I hope he gets arrested for filing a false report.

 

If - IF - this guy did stage it and is caught, do we possibly think that the media would cover the after effect as much/long as they did Bubble Boy???? Nope - they all want to keep the story re Toyota going and going and...

 

Dang Fingers

 

I don't believe this for a nano-second. This is the Prius version of the Balloon Boy, except the Balloon Boy wasn't gunning for a lawsuit with a defendant (Toyota) who just happens to have DEEP pockets. Maybe when the dust settles the CHP will charge him for their time like they did Balloon Boy's parents! It certainly seems like he jumped out of his car and into the waiting arms of the media. The guy hasn't been out of the lens of a camera and microphone since then.

FYI, I'm driving a 2004 with 111,000 miles that I have lovingly put on it. Is the car perfect, no. Is this guy a fraud? Well, if I were a betting type, that's where I would be putting my money.

 

Thanks for the brake-override video, this is actually great! Since the Prius has brake override, if it's proven that the driver was pushing on the brakes (heavy scoring on the pads/disk and linings/drums) when he was going 90 MPH, it will prove once and for all that the sudden accelerations are caused not by floor mats, sticky pedals, or other mechanical problems but by an electronics bug in Toyota accelerator-sensor circuits!

 

I heard a report on AM radio that when he dropped below 50 MPH he did power the car down. Q is the power button disabled above 50, do you lose power steering and power brakes when you power down ? In any event this guy shouldn't be allowed to operate a vehicle if shifting to N didn't occur to him - this has lawsuit written all over it.

 

The 911 Call Center has to release it first.

 

Turn off the volume and watch the guys eyes during any of the early interviews.

Do you still believe him?

 

Toyota should hire "Red" to deliver his famous line from "That 70's Show".


Dumbass.

 

Hmm,

To me its very suspicious that this happened in San Diego. This is the town where the drunk Prius driver destroyed the Chevy S10 truck with a border patrol officer in it. Where another law enforcement official died with his family in a Lexus ES-300 due to a stuck oversized mat, and now this. So much happening there with Toyota products. It seems unnatural. Would a court case in San Diego be unavoidably biased against Toyota? Would this be the best place in the US to take Toyota to court?

The comment Mr Sikes made on the evening news that he was afraid that the car might spin if he put it in neutral - exclaiming he was unfamiliar with the transmission. Hmm - sounds like something somebody would make up to fool people who do not know that is impossible, in any vehicle. Neutral means no transmission of torque from the engine to the wheels. Period. That is the definition. Period. How do you spin a car that is putting no torque on any wheels? You do not. The fact that the Prius is the easiest car to stick into neutral of any car out there again, is like, he ignores the greatest feature of the car to avoid the problem he was in, a proceedure that has been widely publisized. And that is again - SUSPICIOUS.

 

You lose power steering if you power it down and you also risk locking the steering wheel, which could cause a catastrophic accident. You have about one or two pushes of engine vacuum left in the brake booster before you lose the power brakes. So, powering down should be the last resort.

It powers down if you push it more than 3 seconds regardless of speed. I would push the button twice more after powering down the car in order to put the switch to the "ON" mode. This wouldn't restart the engine (unless you are pushing on the brake) but it may enable the electric power steering and it will also make sure that the steering wheel doesn't get locked. (New Priuses don't seem to have the steering-wheel lock feature, probably in the light of latest incidents regarding unintended accelerations.)

So, yes, turning off the engine and putting the switch to "ON" with the engine actually off is a nontrivial procedure for most average driver. These systems are designed to make cars easy to use but they assume that people who use them are totally dumb and they sacrifice the simple OFF/ACC/ON/START controls of an ignition key -- as a result making it more complicated for smart people if they have to use it in an emergency.

Regarding putting the transmission to Neutral, perhaps he did but when the engine revved even more, he was scared and put it back to Drive. Many drivers don't even know what a transmission is or does, yet alone to figure out to put it to "N" in panic, unless they were previously told so. Remember, the family who perished in the Lexus and their 911 operator couldn't figure that out either, and we know for sure they were not pulling a stunt, as the administrators and hardcore fans here have already rushed to that judgment in this Prius incident.